The Fellowship of the Cynics
by Dirk O'Reilly
Summary: A cynical author watches The Fellowship of the Ring and speaks vicariously through the characters.


**Disclaimer: I don't own Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien, and any affiliations of the said series, movie or otherwise.**

"Sound person?"

"Yes, Peter Jackson, sir?"

"Cue the creepy music." By the time the sound person got his act together, the title "New Line Cinema, an AOL Time Warner Company" had already materialized on the screen. Peter, ashamed of his employee's ineptitude, changed the track to some creepy Elvish singers. "Oh, I am so clever, plotting this subtle clue that Galadriel is narrating this by putting in part of the Lothlórien soundtrack and all."

While Peter gloated to himself, "New Line Cinema presents" and "a Wingnut Films production" appeared and faded on screen. Galadriel began to give her environmental spiel even though the screen was still black. "I amar prestar aen. The world is changed. Han mathon ne nen. What we have left of the water supply is polluted. Han mathon ne chae. The Earth is being destroyed by what little machines Middle Earth has. A han noston ned gwilith. The air is practically smog and burning because of the lack of ozone. Nobody remembers what life used to be like, even though some of those who still live were there."

It was at this point that Peter remembered movies also have a visual aspect. "The Lord of the Rings", in gilded gold, faded in. Some of the audience members were surprised they hadn't accidentally walked into the theater showing "An Inconvenient Truth".

Galadriel continued to narrate. "Three Rings were given to the Elves, who kick everyone's ass. And no, the reason that only the one Elf is in focus has absolutely nothing to do with the fact she'll show up later on. Seven to the Dwarves, who pretty much suck. Nine to Men, who above all else, desire to screw everyone over if it will benefit themselves. For discussion's sake, we'll call the Men capitalists. Please take this moment to notice how the Witch-capitalist of Angmar is situated to the front of the V and is left in view the longest. He'll be important about six hours from now.

"Now, Sauron, who was even more right than the Capitalists, forged, in a secret CG-studio, a master Ring, which pretty much screwed everyone over, except the Elves, 'cause they're awesome like that."

"You know," said an audience member off-handedly, "you could blame this on the Elves for teaching Sauron how to forge the rings."

"Silence, fool," interrupted Galadriel. "Now, where were we? Oh, yes. Sauron was too poor to invest in army markers, so he colored in his Middle Earth map with a brown crayon as his Orcs plundered a bunch of villages." The audience watched as Orcs attacked a village, but didn't do a very good job, as all the villagers seemed to get away as one or two houses burned in the background.

"So, then the Elves weren't going to take anymore crap like this, allied themselves with Men so that nobody could come and make a movie called 300 based off of it, and attacked Sauron's army." Real Men attacked real Orcs, before the camera pans to a wide shot of two CG armies beating the crap out of each other. "Please note that the Elf speaking Elvish – not unintelligible English – is not wearing a helmet so you'll recognize him in an hour when he's wearing a dress." The person in charge of subtitles quietly slunk out of the theater.

In the foreground, real Elves pwn3d some real Orcs with a stunning display of choreography. In the background, CG Elves and CG Orcs did the same thing. "Gil-galad, Elrond, and Elendil were about to win the battle – mostly Gil-galad and Elrond – when Sauron came out with his mace and that Ring we were talking about earlier." Amazingly, all three are able to stop fighting while the battle raged on around them, _without _dying. CG Sauron changed shape slightly and played cricket with CG Men and Elves. He was so good he didn't even have to run around the bases.

"Then Elendil, being the stupid Man he was, charged Sauron, who was wearing plate armor, with a sword, and actually expected something to happen." Elendil was maced by Sauron and hit a large, inconveniently placed rock, which hadn't been visible before, but nobody had really moved that much. Isildur was able to mourn his father's death, and miraculously didn't get killed. Sauron noticed this and clomped over, ready to mace Isildur. "But at this moment, Isildur grabbed his father's sword – why not his own sword, we'll never know – and made a wild swing." The wild swing in question just so happened to cut off the Ring. Without his pretty jewelry, Sauron was converted into a 'shroom cloud. An Elf headbanged to the sound, until he and everyone else fell over as the 'shroom cloud spread. The wisps traveled all the way to the Shire, causing most of the Hobbits to get high, lose their inhibitions, and forget to use protection.

"Sauron was defeated."

Peter chuckled to himself. "Defeated, not destroyed. I oh so subtly set up the largest movie franchise ever in that one word."

"Isildur could've destroyed the Ring, but he's a Man, so he didn't. We'll leave out all the information about Elrond until after we establish how good of a character he is." Isildur then rode around, apparently with no purpose other than to show off the shiny Ring and advance the plot. He discovered that he should have sent scouts when he got jumped by a party of Orcs. Again, like in the Battle of Dagorlad, Isildur was able to stand in the middle of the skirmish without dying. He cleverly slipped on the Ring in order to hide. Nobody noticed the strange way the bushes were moving, even when "no one" was there.

Elendil dove into the river and laughed heartily. "It is now most definitely safe for me to take the Ring off. The Orcs can't see me through the water!" Isildur apparently never had learned water was transparent. A few Orcs shot him, and Isildur, clad in full chainmail and plate armor, _floated _away down the river. He knew he should have invested in some real armor. The Ring, in contrast, much heavier, sank to the bottom of the river. The black screen that faded in for a moment reminded audiences most of what they had heard wasn't all that important.

"Fortunately the Ring, hidden in the stupidest of places, was picked up by...a hand! The hand belonged to Gollum, sort of not really. Don't worry, he's not important for another three hours, and we'll drop some more exposition on you at that point so it'll possibly make sense. Anyway, the Ring corrupted Gollum and he lived for a super long time. But not as long as the Elves, though. We still kick his ass." The audience looked at a white blob that, even in the bright light, was not very distinguishable.

With some movie magic, The Hobbit condensed itself into about five seconds to its main point – Bilbo finding the Ring. Somewhere far away, Gollum lamented the fact that he took off his Ring and forgot where he put it. Bilbo picked it up and examined it. "I have absolutely no moral qualms about taking this Ring from the creepy...thing that it clearly belongs to. It most definitely won't do anything bad to me."

Someone in the audience remarked, "You know, Sauron eventually captures Gollum, so if Bilbo hadn't taken the Ring, someone could just have been sent to go there and chuck Gollum into Mount Doom." However, no one was listening because they had hopped onto the Magical Map of Travel to advance to Scene Two. On the way, they realized that they remembered nothing from the first scene, other than there was a Ring that would be central to the story. And they couldn't've inferred that from the title.

**A/N: This is my first attempt at a Lord of the Rings fanfiction, so I would appreciate feedback. If you notice any errors, grammatical or otherwise, please let me know and I will fix them.**


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